Finding our voice
I walk a fine line between loving and loathing transitions. It’s a big part of how I identify professionally as a therapist and coach. And so, I love working with people who are in those in between spaces in life. As a person, I don’t look forward quite as much.
But, that’s the process of mending, healing, changing. It’s transition – from one community to the next, one identity to the next, one theology, ethic, philosophy to the next.
It’s natural. It’s a part of life. It sucks as well.
And, what no one generally tells you, is that it’s easy to get stuck or scared. Moving from solid footing and stepping out into the ether and the unknown is a terrifying experience.
There are voices, real and imagined, who remind us of past failures or tell us we won’t make it. My voices talk in the third person. The usually only use my last name, like I am some kind of basic training drop out. It barks orders at me, fills my head with disparaging remarks, calls me names.
All in the service of safety mind you. It really wants to protect me from harm or hurt. It doesn't believe I can survive the failure (which is inevitable at times). It wants to wound me so that when I take my steps, they’re hesitant and slow.
That voice, that wounded drill sergeant, wants nothing more than my survival at any cost. It finds solace in the routine and predictable. I’m pretty sure we all have voices like that or some kind of internal monitor on our activities.
Sometimes, those voices are external though. These are people who are certain they have it and you figured out. They’re the ones who constantly remind us how they know best, how their experiences are good enough for all of us.
These are the hallway monitors of curiosity and creativity, ready to slap our hands when we get a little too frisky. They’re the first to report us to the principal when we dare take an unplanned step or head to the bathroom without a hall pass.
Our curiosity threatens their power.
Read that again, our curiosity threatens their power.
That’s the only reason an internal or external voice cautions us against the journeys and transitions of our lives. Believing in yourself threatens their ability to be powerful. If we do it enough, then we leave them behind.
When I work with clients it brings tears to my eyes when they finally grab ahold of that new identity or embrace that next transition.
It doesn’t mean that the voices are gone, but they transform. They lose some of that stranglehold of power over us.
Sometimes, they develop into new wisdom, reminding us that we don’t need powerful people to tell us what to do or say or be. Sometimes, we can laugh and pat those voices on the head and simply say, thanks but no thanks.
I had a whole thing about faith in here, but it really isn’t necessary. You get the point.
Our voices, our lives, our very steps were meant to be expressed, heard, experienced, validated, sung, shouted, loved, and shared. That’s the message of an expansive God, a God who endures.
The small gods people in power create should never hold us back from becoming, from transitioning, from creating and being curious.
It’s amazing what you can finally experience when you leave the echo chambers of the powerful.